Phoenix – Four recent cases in which gunmen apparently tried to kidnap illegal immigrants from their smugglers underscore an increase in violence in the human trafficking trade, border agents say.
Three people were killed last week north of Tucson in what authorities believe was the latest example of armed smugglers trying to steal migrants from rival traffickers.
Kidnappings – or rip-offs, as federal agents call them – can prove lucrative for smugglers, with ransoms typically ranging from $1,200 to $2,500 per person. The smugglers also don’t have to pay employees to recruit would-be border-crossers in Mexico and guides to lead them through the desert.
“They lose a lot of overhead costs,” said Angel Rascon, who supervises smuggling investigations in Arizona for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “The entire fees that are collected by the rip-off crews are for their own gain.”
Arizona, the busiest illegal entry point on the U.S.-Mexico border, leads all other southern border states in rip-offs. Over the last four years, cases also have surfaced in the Houston area, officials said.
Smugglers have stolen clients from rivals just feet from the Arizona-Mexico border, and have even raided rival gangs’ stash houses in metropolitan Phoenix, a launching point for moving illegal immigrants to jobs across the country.
Authorities say they started seeing these types of crimes in the late 1990s. ICE spokeswoman Lauren Mack said Monday that agents in Arizona worked on more than 60 such cases from April 2005 to July 2006.
Since then, five cases have been reported, including the four investigated in the past two weeks. But Rascon noted that it is early in the peak immigrant smuggling season, which usually begins around mid-January and ends in May.
